Category Archives: Olympics

When was the last time you cried? For me, it was last week. I don’t cry often. I tear up often, but I don’t weep. You know, like, with tears coming down my cheeks. But men’s figure skating touched me so much the other night, I was weeping. What does this have to do with homeschooling? Everything.

Jeremy Abbott fell during the men’s long program at the Sochi Olympics. But he got up and finished the program.

Homeschooling can be intense – like the Olympics. Many are called, few are chosen. Few can put up with the pressure. Much of the pressure we bring upon ourselves. Injuries happen. Emotional injuries, mostly, for us. One homeschooling mom who graduated her two children told me that we don’t know how angry we are until we homeschool.

So much of ourselves comes out in the process of imparting knowledge to our children. Stuff that we did not even know was there. It takes us by surprise. We wonder if we can move on. And we have to move on. In spite of our mistakes and our shortcomings and our failings, we must pick ourselves back up, apologize to our children, and start another day. Continue reading »

Our lives revolve around LEGO building systems or so it seems. We use LEGO Education sets in our homeschooling efforts. Then, we use LEGO brick sets for any type of free play my children dream up.

I recently discovered a blog (now inactive) which provided a list of 52 LEGO challenges – one for every week of the year. You may have seen my first post in this series. For other LEGO-related posts, please click here.

My son recently finished four more LEGO Quests and here they are.

LEGO Quest #7 – Collaboration

The idea is to work with at least one other person in creating a project, whatever that project might be. Well, we all pitched in. Daddy, mommy and little sister helped, but we let him come up with the idea.

Our son decided he wanted to build a home – which I thought was appropriate since we were all going to help him. Together, we built a home. Does anybody else see any symbolism in this?

LEGO Home

He and his sister decided to add a few more details to it.

Finishing touches on the LEGO home

LEGO Quest #8 – Your Favorite Book

It could be a character, scene, object or even a feeling from that book. He first chose the book, “Winnie the Pooh.” Then, he was stumped. I suggested a few things and he chose to make Winnie’s honey pot. There he is, taking a picture of his creation, while little sister is looking on.

Photographing his Winnie the Pooh honey pot

These days, my son is fascinated with counting to 100 by 10s. So he was asking for quest #10, then #20, then #30… Neither inspired him. We continued down the list of quests and we ran out. Finally, we decided to work on (almost) the last two.

LEGO Quest #50 – Macro Scale

The idea is to reproduce a brick or a plate in macro scale. He made a small tent and a big tent.

Macro scale LEGO tents

LEGO Quest #51 – Olympic Event

I reminded him what the Olympic Games are. We looked at the examples provided on the blog, but nothing inspired him. He decided to build a mini-golf course, probably inspired by our latest putt-putt game.

Notice the attendant ready to give out golf clubs (leaning against red bricks in the attendant’s box) and golf balls (in the yellow box). I know, I know, putt-putt is not an Olympic game yet, but maybe it should be, for the sake of five-year-old boys and girls all over the world.